London is outside the bus station searching for her car keys in her purse when a bright red Mustang convertible pulls into the parking spot next to her. London doesn’t have to see the personalized licence plate to know that it’s Anastasia Peters, with her brain-dead boyfriend, Andy, in the passenger seat. Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy, London calls them – not to their faces of course. She has too much invested in her own face. She doesn’t have any secret nicknames for their two creepy androgynous sidekicks, Ryan and Dylan, who are sitting in the back, dressed in black and nearly indistinguishable from each other.

“Heeeeey, London,” Anastasia says. She is also dressed all in black with a black and white headband in her black hair, and is simultaneously smoking a cigarette and drinking pop out of one of those ginormous McDonald’s cups that London is pretty sure is illegal in parts of the world. “What’s up, buttercup?” Anastasia’s voice is throaty and low, and if she keeps smoking the way she does it will probably turn into one of those gross old lady voices before she’s even twenty.

London takes out her keys and positions them in her hand like a weapon. “What are you doing, stalking me?”

“We were just in the neighbourhood and we saw your Nana’s car.” Anastasia pauses, sucking back some pop from the straw. “That is the same car I saw her driving around the track at school, right? Looks a little banged up. I hope she didn’t get in an accident.”

Around the track. Nana swore to London afterward that she wasn’t crazy – she just wanted to see “what it would be like to be a race car driver.” But it didn’t matter what her intentions were. Intentions mean nothing to teenaged girls.

“What do you want, Anastasia?” she asks.

“We thought maybe you’d want to go to Merla Mae with us and get some ice cream?” She finishes her cigarette and flicks it to the ground. “Or do they not give out food stamps for that?”

“Ha ha, good one, a poverty joke.” London leans against her car and crosses her arms. She’s not afraid of Anastasia, even though most people are. Not really. “Why don’t you go drown yourself in your swimming pool, you classist bitch.”

“Sounds like someone misses being invited over for pool parties,” Dylan says.

“She was never invited to any pool parties,” Anastasia says. “Not any good ones, anyway.”

“None of them were good ones,” says London. It’s a lame dig, but it’s all she’s got.

Anastasia lights another cigarette and hoists herself up in her seat until she is sitting on the top. She swings her bare legs in front of her and rests her high-heeled feet on the steering wheel. “What are you doing at the bus station, anyway?”

“None of your fucking business.”